W.H. Auden

Culture, in fact, is something more than merely a relative anthropological concept. “Men are born not with equal abilities but with an equal weakness.” Culture, then, is something to be won, and difficult to retain. It is not knowledge, though knowledge is essential; it is not intellect or will, though these are the means to its attainment; it is not self-expression, though those who have it are more truly themselves: it might be defined as a power to resist a blind all-or-none reaction to the immediate stimulus, a willingness to make choices and to admit when, as will often happen, they prove wrong, an awareness, with Dante, that “man was never without love natural and love rational. The natural is always without error, but the other may err through an evil object ... love is the seed of every virtue in you and of every deed that deserves punishment.”

W.H. Auden, review of Historian and Scientist, by Gaetano Salvemini, The Nation (July 6, 1940)